The Oneida Project

A story

Dr. Martha Tollman strode confidently into a first-floor classroom of Oneida State College’s new Walton Building for the Arts and Sciences. Many professors roll into the first day of class like a hulking steam engine struggling to gain speed, but not Tollman. Tollman lives by that line about first impressions and came prepared with a full day’s lesson for this first day of her first tenure track academic position.

Tollman finished her PhD at Oxford the prior spring and spent the next several months formatting job applications for every cultural anthropology position in Europe. The CV. The Diversity Statement. The Letter of Interest. She lived frugally, stringing together a living on adjunct stipends and freelance editing gigs and crossed her fingers for a call back.

Meanwhile, Tollman worked on turning her dissertation into a book, a theory-dense treatise on power structures in post-colonial Congolese mining communities. She travelled there twice for a few weeks during her 3rd and 4th years to collect enough interviews through mutually broken French to string together a study. She shared candids of ruddy Congolese miners on her social media alongside pleading captions for justice.

That fall’s hiring round concluded unremarkably after three phone interviews and a fruitless on-campus at a Swedish University. Discouraged but undeterred, Tollman set her sights further afield to the less congested academic landscape of the United States, where she was warmly received. By the end of January, Tollman had amassed four on-campus interviews spread throughout the eastern U.S., enough to justify an overseas trip.

Florida Gulf University was beautiful, but its rowdy and tan student body was an awkward fit for a fair-skinned English girl from Bristol. Ruth Williams College in rural New Hampshire was beautiful and expensive but couldn’t shake its reputation as an historic women’s College. And Midwestern State University was great at football but seemingly little else.

So that’s how she landed at Oneida State College, a mid-sized Institution nestled in the verdant, coal-seamed hills of southern Appalachia. It was an easy sell. An Englishwoman who spent a little time in the Congo stood out by comparison to the American candidates researching online culture from the comfort of their home offices. And Tollman’s research on mining’s human dimension was a natural fit for a land-grant Institution located in American coal country. Tollman promised in her interviews to extend her research from Congolese miners to the dying American coal industry in their own backyard, an exciting prospect to the hiring committee of outsiders still perplexed by the local population well past tenure.

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Some of those locals quietly filed into Tollman’s class, checking their phones and confirming they were in the right place. “Cultural Anthropology?” “Yep.” Lawmakers had recently approved a State lottery and allocated the proceeds to higher education. Enrollment doubled, mostly due to first generation and non-traditional students, HR-speak for ‘poor’ and ‘old’. Tollman’s intro class was full of them. Oneida State built new classrooms and renovated the recreation center, expanding the historic campus core into some former soccer fields with a complex of glass and steel buildings to accommodate the increased demand.

Tollman sat at the front of a classroom in one of those buildings, funded in part by Walmart’s Walton Family Foundation. There was a long whiteboard across the front of the classroom with a small kiosk to one side housing the brains of the new ‘smart’ classroom equipped to live stream lectures and host video chats. Students sat in long rows facing the board, a wall of windows to their backs overlooking a parking lot, then a vacant field, then the silhouette of a fast-food chicken place in the distance.

Tollman organized a stack of syllabi to occupy her hands, reflecting on her career. After a higher education marathon that finally ended in her 30s, she’d made it. Oneida State College wasn’t the first, or even 10th place an Oxford educated anthropologist might choose to work, but it was tenure track and who knows what the future holds. Tollman joked to her friends and colleagues back home that she was merely checking in on the outlying territories before moving onto better things.

The truth was, however, that she was fascinated and terrified by the locals in equal measure. Southern Appalachia was in many ways more foreign to her than the Congo. The dialects, the religious fervor, the strange traditions and antiquated gender roles. The vine-choked hills that overtook everything neglected and the deep ‘hollers’, each with a secret. Oneida State was a job but it was also a field project, and Tollman was there to figure it all out.

“Alright then class, let us get started,” Tollman announced. The class finished their sentence, murmuring about Tollman’s accent. “I am Dr. Martha Tollman, and welcome to Introduction to Cultural Anthropology.” A student near the back stood from her seat, grabbed her bag, and crouched timidly as she weaved toward the exit. “Already scared one off now didn’t we?” Tollman quipped as the door shut, breaking the tension hanging over the first day of class.

Tollman distributed the stack of syllabi and reviewed it page by page. Concluding her review, she looked up from the syllabus and addressed the class directly. “Before we begin, I would like us all to introduce ourselves. I’ll start.” Tollman reviewed her story for the class, how a British woman ended up in rural Appalachia. She peppered in details about her hobbies (baking, knitting) and relationships (a cat, a long-distance boyfriend) to humanize herself and asked the 15-person class to do the same.

Kyle Sutton is an Ag Science major from Stonewall County and wants to take over the family farm after graduation. Amber Ogle is a freshman applying for the nursing program after year 2. Billy Maples is from Oneida and actually thinking about majoring in Anthropology. Mary King returned to school after being laid off from the mine last year and is just excited to be here. The introductions concluded with a thick-necked athlete named Shane (no last name given) slouching in the back corner and Tollman transitioned seamlessly into the day’s lecture: cultural relativism.

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“Of anthropology’s many contributions to public discourse, cultural relativism might be its greatest,” Tollman began. “Before we embark upon the study of human culture, we must free ourselves from the judgements we so often impose on other cultures while embedded within our own.”

Tollman turned to the class computer and pulled up a classic piece of anthropological writing called Body Ritual Among the Nacirema by Horace Miner. Tollman reviewed Miner’s paper, which describes in exotic terms the customs and traditions of the Nacirema people, who practice extreme forms of body modification and magical rites. At the end, Tollman reveals that the Nacirema are Americans (spelled backwards), a decades-old pedagogical trick that has awakened many Intro students to cultural relativism.

“What about you all?” Tollman inquired. “Can you think of anything ‘normal’ in your lives that might seem strange to outsiders?” Billy Maples, the potential anthro grad, shot his hand in the air, obviously loving this first day’s lesson. “In my church growing up we would like, all touch certain people that were having a hard time with something and they would cry and moan as the preacher prayed. I’m used to it, but it’s probably pretty strange for people that didn’t grow up with it.”

This was gold, Tollman thought to herself. “Great example,” Tollman responded to Billy. “In religious practice we often find the most extreme examples of cultural abstraction. These practices make sense within their own cultures but seem completely weird to those from the outside. Can anybody think of other examples?”

The room grew quiet as the class stared at their hands to avoid being called upon. Eventually, Mary King, the coal miner, slowly raised her hand. “Mary, right? What can you share?”

“I wasn’t down in the mine or nothin. I just did paperwork, but the miners would always do this thing before each shift where they kissed their hand and touched this one spot on the adit gate as they entered the mine. It had something to do with an accident back in the 70s. I just always thought it was funny, watching all these big guys do this little ritual every day.”

“Brilliant!” Tollman exclaimed. “Rituals are part of all cultures, but they are especially elaborate among cultures that must mitigate substantial risk to safety or health on a regular basis. I would imagine that coal mining is just that sort of culture. The miners of the Congo had similar rituals.”

Tollman made her way around the room, asking each student to contribute something to the conversation. Tollman paused to emphasize after each that it is not our job as anthropologists to judge, but to understand.

Tollman noticed between conversations that Shane, the student athlete in the back, didn’t seem interested in the lesson. In fact, he seemed increasingly irritated. Tollman ended her lesson on Shane, asking him to contribute something to the conversation. “Surely, athletes at your high level of performance maintain some odd practices worth sharing with the class,” Tollman inquired flatteringly.

“I guess,” Shane said bluntly. “We do chants in the locker room and stuff.”

Tollman pressed him further. “What type of chants? Are these songs or more like shouts? Do you clap your hands or stomp your feet along to these chants?”

Shane snapped and spilled his thoughts. “I don’t know. Look, what if other cultures actually ARE weird and worse than our culture? Like, aren’t some cultures just wrong? My uncle was in Iraq and he said those people did some pretty messed up stuff over there.”

Tollman defused the conversation. “I’m really glad you brought that up Shane.” She patiently explained with matronly affect why even cultures that may seem morally "wrong” or “messed up” make more sense when you understand them. She drove the point home with an example intended to shock. “In many African Nations, they still practice female genital mutilation at birth, where a female child’s privates are severely burned and permanently scarred.” The class winced. “I know it seems shocking, but how many of you young men are circumcised?” Billy began to raise his hand before realizing it was a rhetorical question and quickly lowered it. “Isn’t that practice, so common to the Western world, a form of child genital mutilation? Let’s not be so quick to judge.”

The point seemed to land and Shane slunk back into his seat. Tollman thought to herself that she’d have fun bringing this one around.

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Tollman walked back toward the front of the class as she resumed lecturing. She heard the faint buzzing of a silenced cell phone and noticed out of the corner of her eye the frantic movements of someone searching for it. Mary the coal miner. Mary stopped the buzzing only to have it start again a few moments later. She seemed flustered as she quietly packed up her belongings. “I’m so sorry,” Mary whispered to Tollman as she slunk out of her seat. “I’ve got a family emergency.” Mary opened the classroom door, exited, and then eased it back into its latch to minimize her disturbance.

As Tollman resumed her post at the front of the room, she saw Mary re-emerge on the other side of large plate glass windows at the back of the class, walking toward a man standing by an early 00s Honda sedan in the parking lot. He stubbed out a cigarette on the ground as she approached.

“One of Boas’s great insights was breaking from previous theorists who viewed cultures as entrenched in evolutionary trajectories along a continuum between simple and complex. Boas taught us that each culture is uniquely and beautifully adapted to their historical and environmental circumstances and should be studied as such.”

Mary and the man were arguing in the parking lot, silent behind glass. Tollman tried to keep from being distracted.

“Viewed in this way, we cannot possibly impose concepts of superiority and inferiority on cultures or cultural practices. Those practices are simply outgrowths of structural forces beyond each culture’s control.”

Mary appeared to begin crying softly as the man leaned in with his finger pointed at her chest. He pointed through the window of the classroom, staring Mary in the face, then pointed with his other hand into the back seat of the sedan.

Tollman persisted. “Even concepts of good and evil, or moral right and wrong have been shown repeatedly in a diverse range of global contexts to be deeply embedded within cultural structures. Anthropology teaches us that casting judgements on cultural practices will always be situated within our own limited conception of right and wrong.”

Mary moved toward the sedan’s backseat as the man grasped at her arm. Mary wriggled loose, opened the door, and stooped inside. She emerged with a child in her arms, maybe a year old. The man continued berating Mary, pointing to the classroom as Mary bounced the child in her arms. The child’s face twisted into a frown and Mary continued to cry.

Tollman continued her lecture about the merits of cultural relativism as the argument played out in the parking lot unbeknownst to the attentive class. Eventually, Mary placed the child back in the sedan and closed the door. The man gently placed his hands around Mary’s elbows and the argument seemed to subside.

Tollman was relieved. It wasn’t her place to intervene in these things anyway, right? And she had heard about the animated emotional displays in Appalachian culture, shifting from impassioned anger to love on a dime. These were the Scots-Irish, after all. The hardscrabble pioneers of Appalachia so often abused by the industrial-capitalist system of the American government. Generations of trauma at the hands of this exploitative system might sometimes manifest itself like this.

As these thoughts passed through Tollman’s mind, Mary looked up to the man, still held tightly in his two hands, and spit in his face. The man threw Mary to the ground, eliciting a scream that cut through the classroom window.

The class spun around in time to see the man looming over Mary, vitriol in his face. Shane was the first to speak. “That’s my piece of shit cousin! I ain’t seen him since he got fired from the mine.” Shane motioned to Kyle the Ag Science major, and they hustled out of the classroom and into the parking lot. Tollman called campus security and then watched helplessly through the window as her two students subdued the man, landing a few gut punches in the process. Mary sobbed on the clean white concrete.

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Campus security arrived to break up the altercation and then entered Tollman’s class to question witnesses. Tollman was shaken but pulled herself together enough to formally dismiss the class. “Well that was certainly an interesting first day,” Tollman said in an attempt at levity. “Your reading for next class is by Rosaldo, who provides us with the cultural context necessary to understand why the llongot Tribe decapitate and mummify the heads of their enemies.” The class filed out silently while a campus officer stayed behind to take a statement from Tollman.

“How much did ya see?” the officer asked in a thick Appalachian drawl. Tollman recounted the incident, providing the detail of a trained human observer. “Thanks for your detailed account ma’am. But I gotta ask. Why’d you let it get so far?” Tollman’s eloquent English failed her as she stumbled over her words, explaining that she was in the middle of lecture and it wasn’t her business to judge or intervene in such matters. She didn’t know their history or what led them here. Maybe it was normal. The officer nodded along politely. “I get it. We could all use a little understanding. Even if they’re head hunters, right?” They both laughed. “But an asshole is an asshole everywhere. It’s fine to watch people but sometimes you gotta deal with ‘em too. Keep that in mind next time.”

Tollman left campus and drove the 10 minutes to her new house, a run-down but quaint Craftsman in Oneida’s historic downtown district. She rummaged through a moving box and found a blank field notebook destined to contain the seeds of her next book. She cracked the spine and wrote on the first page “an asshole is an asshole everywhere”, closed the book, and then wrote on its cover “Oneida Project.” Some anthropology just writes itself.